The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman

The last time I read this series, it was before I joined Goodreads, and way before I started reviewing books regularly, so it took me a minute to put my thoughts together. I’d never read this book critically before, only with the half-frightened fascination a kid has for something they find intriguing but don’t really understand, and then again when I was older, to try and relive that feeling. When I first read this book a year or so after it was published, it scared the hell out of me. It was so creepy and adult feeling. I had no […]

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Mythology by Edith Hamilton

This is one of those books you hear about and then buy in a used bookstore and it languishes on your bookshelves for years until you finally pick it up, and then you just end up thinking to yourself, why didn’t I pick this up sooner? Only, it’s also one of those books that really works better as a reference than as a book you sit down and read from cover to cover. I read this book over the course of most of February, in bits and pieces, and it worked well that way. This book is a classic for […]

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Hexed (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #2) by Kevin Hearne

I bought the first six books of this series several years ago in paperback, but I wish I hadn’t. I think if I read this by audio instead of hard copy, I would have enjoyed it more. (I really enjoyed my audio re-read of the first book a couple of months ago. Luke Daniels is one of my favorite narrators.) But I feel like it would be wasting all that money I spent, so I’m committed to do hard copies at least through book six. All of that to say, this book was fun, but I wasn’t wowed by it […]

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On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Contemporary isn’t usually my genre, but this was really well put together. A good follow up to The Hate U Give. This is one of those reviews that makes my review backlog pile up, because I’m having a hard time saying stuff about it. So I’m just going to wing it and live with the fact that my review will not be as good as I want it to be, or say what I want it to say (whatever that is? I don’t even know). I liked this book quite a bit, but not as much as I liked THUG. […]

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The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish

This was a pretty good listen. There were parts during the first third or so where I was actually laughing out loud, and I don’t do that very much. Mostly it’s just inward laughter or maybe a small noise of some sort to indicate my own amusement to myself. She was cracking me up, though (definitely do the audio if you’re going to do it at all; the swamp tour story alone is worth it). But then a single chapter had to go and ruin it for me. Most of the book is delightful. Tiffany clearly wrote the book herself; […]

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The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy, #3) by Katherine Arden

Time to buckle down and once again go at my review backlog. Apologies in advance for the sloppy or haphazard reviews about to spew forth from my keyboard. This trilogy, to sum up, is worth it. It’s a bit of a slow burn in the first book as Arden really sets her stage, with amazingly detailed descriptions of what life was like in medieval Russia, but I think all that set-up is more than worth it for the end product, which was a coming of age adventure about a girl who doesn’t want to be put in a cage, any […]

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Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

First things first, this book is a slow burn. I wish I would have known that going in, I would have started it sooner and read it over a longer time frame. The first half meanders along and nothing seems to be connected, and getting to know the main players is not a quick process. If you’re prepared for that going in, you will probably end up liking this book. And about halfway through, it picks up quite a bit, and keeps getting stronger until the end. And no matter what, it’s a SIGNIFICANT improvement over my experience with Setterfield’s […]

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The Golden Tresses of the Dead (Flavia de Luce, #10) by Alan Bradley

Flavia (and Dogger) continue to delight me. The mysteries continue to frustrate me. Will I continue to read this series (even though this was originally supposed to be the last book)? Most likely. The book opens at Flavia’s sister’s wedding to the German POW Dieter. Feely finds a severed finger in her wedding cake. She loses it and almost ruins her own wedding; Flavia is fascinated, and quickly tucks the finger away. Whose finger is it? Who put it there? Why? Flavia and Dogger are on the case, with their new investigative business, Arthur Dogger & Associates. And they have their […]

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